Gary and I differ.
If I know something, I assume Gary knows it. We have been having those old people conversations in which one of us says, “Who was that one guy in that one show?” and the other says, “Jerry Stiller.” So I assume we have the same neural pathways and cultural references. (To be fair, recently I didn’t know “that big French woman” was Juliet Prowse.)
Recently I was trying to think of the name of a particular band. I said, “You know, the thing in that one weird book everyone has sex with.”
To my surprise, he said, “What are you talking about?”.
By then I’d remembered the band name. “Steely Dan. You didn’t know how Steely Dan got its name? I assumed you did.”
“No one knows that.”
“Alexa, where did the band Steely Dan get its name?”
Alexa answered, “Famously, Steely Dan takes its name from a sex device featured in Naked Lunch.”
I said, “’Famously.’ Common knowledge.”
As you see, I think all knowledge is shared with Gary. If I know it then he does. However, if Gary knows something, he assumes that means I must not know it.
This is how the conversation would above would go if Gary had just learned this Steely Dan trivia.
Gary would say, “[blah blah blah], Steely Dan. Steely Dan got their name from a sex device in a book.”
“Yes, I know. Naked Lunch,” I would say.
“No, it was Naked Lunch.”
“Yes, Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs.”
“No. Alexa, who wrote Naked Lunch?”
“Naked Lunch was written by William S. Burroughs and published in 1959.”
My fear is that we both treat the rest of the world the same way. I know Gary “mansplains,” and I suspect I gibber on making arcane references until people ask if I’ve had brain damage. I suppose both of us would be more tolerable if we prefaced everything with Today I Learned or Did You Know.